Most of you already know that I live in a house off campus. For those of you that don’t, I live in a house off campus. The cool thing about my house is that the rent is cheap and I rarely get bothered by the landlord or neighbors. The bad thing is that the house itself was constructed with roughly the same quality standards as a doll house.
 
Granted, we throw a lot of parties here and there is a constant stream of people coming and going. We’re rough on the place, but we’re not exactly hosting UFC fights every weekend. Some of the damage to the house is understandable but some of it is completely absurd.
 
I should have known what to expect after my first day living here. The day that I moved in, the refrigerator door broke off as I was unpacking my first round of groceries. I popped it back in place and held it there with a cereal box supporting the bottom. The landlord, begrudgingly, came out to fix it the next day. That would be the last thing he would ever fix in this house.
 
A few days after I moved in, I threw myself a housewarming party. At this point there was nothing in the house except for a long table for beerpong, a couch, and an air mattress in my room. And beer in the fridge. The next morning, I discovered the cabinet/mirror in the bathroom had come out of the wall and was hanging perilously by electrical wires. I have no idea how that happened, but I figured it would be an easy fix. I tried to screw it back in but found that the holes had been stripped. Fine. I tried to nail the damn thing back in place. I must have pounded in seven or eight different nails before I realized that there isn’t actually a stud behind the mirror. That means there was never anything to screw into and the thing had been holding onto empty drywall the entire time. After letting it hang for a few days, I disconnected the entire thing and took it down. It is still sitting on my hallway floor to this day.
 
The next thing to go was the front door handle. Again, I have no fucking idea how these things happen, but one day the front door knob decided to unscrew itself and hang by a thread. It was back door entry only (in a non-sexual way) for a few days until my rommate figured out how to fix it.
 
My bedroom door also fell victim to whatever bizarre curse is responsible for all of this. Someone bumped into it one night, causing the top hinge to rip completely out of the wall. My door was left leaning away from the frame at a 20 degree angle or so. Again, the screws just stripped right out and there was no screwing them back in. I left my door like this for a good five months. I just fixed it yesterday, as a matter of fact. And by fixed I mean temporarily jury-rigged.
 
A few weeks ago our toilet handle snapped off. Like everything else in the house, it didn’t just come off in a clean fashion, but rather was completely destroyed. I replaced it with an industrial strength, metal, bad-ass motherfucker of a toilet handle. I see this as a victory because now our toilet is better than ever.
 
There are a few swollen floor boards in our dining room. We’re not talking “slightly beveled,” swollen, we’re talking “you will trip over this and die if you’re not careful,” swollen. The peak of the swelling is a good two to three inches higher than the rest of the floor. I contribute this to a geographical fault underneath the house. It remains unfixed.
 
I just listed all of this crap, and I still feel like I’m missing something. Unbelievable.
 
You have a pretty simple choice, really. Live in a normal place and don’t throw parties, and you won’t have to deal with home improvement. But if you want cheap rent and lots of alcohol, you’re going to have to be ready for this kind of thing. Don’t say you weren’t warned.